Category: Blog

Today, the Pittsburgh City Council unanimously passed a proclamation on conflict minerals in Congo, becoming the first city in the country to call for "electronic companies and other industries to take the necessary steps to remove conflict minerals from their supply chain." Introduced by Councilman Doug Shields, the proclamation further states that the City of Pittsburgh urges the U.S. government to take the lead in helping establish an international certification scheme to ensure that minerals that end up in consumer electronics and other products don’t come from mines controlled by militia groups in eastern Congo ...

Silence may not seem to be the most effective way to spread the word about violence waged by the Lord’s Resistance Army, but Invisible Children is banking on the idea that if nearly 30,000 vocal young activists keep quiet for 25 hours, their point will come across loud and clear ...

As troops from both the SAF and SPLA continue to swell in the Abyei region, U.N. peacekeepers there face perhaps their toughest test yet to try and contain a potential North-South war. Judging from internal U.N. reports and recent interviews on the ground, inaction in Abyei has cost the U.N. peacekeepers precious credibility with the local population that once lost will be very difficult to regain ...

The May edition of Oprah’s O Magazine highlights the release of John Prendergast’s newest book, Unlikely Brothers, a co-authored memoir written with John’s “little brother” Michael Mattocks. The book tells the story of John and Michael’s intertwined lives over nearly 30 years. “[T]heir friendship thrived through years of fishing trips and summer vacations in Philadelphia, but struggled when Prendergast’s activism took him overseas just as Mattocks was spiraling into drug dealing, street violence, and arrests in his teens,” wrote Kimberly Hiss in O ...

In a recent report analyzing South Sudan’s changing political scene, the International Crisis Group described the region’s transition to statehood as a “window of opportunity,” particularly for those formerly excluded from positions of political power, “in which relationships between, and among, state and non-state actors may be redefined.” The assurance of South Sudan’s independence in July appears to have altered the calculations of many of the region’s armed actors in similar fashion. Since the announcement of South Sudan’s referendum results in early February, the region’s headlines have been dominated by the violent activities of existing militias, and the announcements of ...

On a recent trip to the North and South Kivu provinces of Congo, I went to great lengths to go beyond the subject material I was there to research. I wanted to ask people—both Congolese and foreign—about their lives and experiences, and about their interpretation of the past and future for the families and communities of the people of eastern Congo. For a couple of weeks I bounced around in trucks and boats between Goma and Bukavu, and the myriad of different stories and historical interpretations became overwhelming. Just when I thought I understood “the real story,” someone would come ...

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday ...

In writings on Abyei, there is often the assumption that the Misseriya and Dinka Ngok groups who have a stake in the region speak as one, or are spoken for by the handful of Misseriya and Dinka political “leaders” that are quoted in the media. In reality, there are gaps between the thinking of government representatives in the two capitals and their “loyalists” on the ground ...

If you knew your family savings or retirement funds were financing a government’s genocidal campaign, would you keep sending money? JPMorgan Chase is faced with this question right now ...

On Friday, April 8, students from Saint Michael’s College, in Colchester, VT, came down to the nation’s capital to rally in front of the State Department to demand the appointment of a U.S. Special Envoy to the Greater Lakes Region of Africa ...